Sad Partings...

Its so easy to get attached to people around you...the ones with whom you spend most of your time. And saying goodbye after a long attachment is tough. But its the way life goes on. Recollecting the memories of the farewell at school definitely brings a smile on our faces and that moment had been one quite close to our hearts. Parting away from friends and from our early year crushes made us somewhat emotional.

And even now its no different, making new friends and that too close ones in a short span of time and yet saying goodbyes to them seems so difficult. It was an amazing evening out with my friends the day before filled with enjoyment. But it was kind of a farewell party. That was the difficult part.

Heartiest congratulations to him for moving on.

Morning...Afternoon...Evening...

Quite a normal day yet eventful. It usually starts normally. Getting up in the morning and getting ready for work, grabbing the newspaper and running through the headlines, getting stuck in the traffic at times and finally reaching the office either on time or late. Getting the morning greetings everyday in our inbox is what I would call an excellent start for the day. The solution for almost 50% of the problems are in those greetings.

After this excellent start seriousness silently creeps in.Slowly everybody just gets engrossed in work. And as the afternoon approaches it becomes quite aggressive. With the increased aggressiveness, tempers rise which eventually resulted in raised voices yesterday. It did sent shivers in my body for a moment. There was an eerie silence on the work floor with more seriousness on faces and smiles completely vanished.

Yet it is the application of true sportsman spirit in such situations which brings everything back to normal within minutes. Smiles were back but not for all.For few emotions come in the way.She is strong yet I viewed her sensitive part. Its quite hard to handle. Having gone through that phase I know it takes some time to be back to normal.She would feel better after a good night's sleep and feel stronger after that. Still its hats off to those struggling hard with their emotions to bring things back to normal and to those who within minutes bring the smiles back.

By evening everybody is relaxed and some just head off to party.Seeing one of my friend in a changed look almost brought the "miss world expression" on my face. That was really funny. The rain is an added pleasure but the traffic jams were again a spoil spot. Walking towards home and enjoying the weather I was almost dancing with the street dog.

It was wonderful, eventful, enjoyable and yet normal.

The Conference

Conferences are usually considered to be quite boring. One can easily recall the Parliament's budget session where the attendees are either yawning or banging the tables. Contradictory to this common notion, for me conferences have always been quite an attraction.

These are the corporate conferences that seem to be quite attractive. The first one that I attended was way back when I had just passed out of school. It was a Law Seminar. This was quite different from a corporate conference. Here the audience comprised of students and parents. It was a seminar on why to choose law as a career. What keeps your attention grabbed in such a seminar or a conference is the way panel members present themselves and their topics. I still remember the person who addressed us in this law seminar was a young corporate lawyer who had this big smile on his face. He was a good orator. The way he was sharing his experience with us was very interesting adding the tinge of humour now and then. His voice was quite energetic and he made it quite an interactive session as well.During the session I made a query to him regarding placements after completion of law. Not only he answered it quite well but he gave it a positive bend as he said at the start of your career no matter whatever choice you make just maintain a positive outlook for it.

And yet another conference that I had attended just yesterday gave me the same feel. This was exactly what I would refer as an "attractive corporate conference". It was about the foreign upcoming markets. The panel members had smiling faces and amazing experiences as well as knowledge databases to share with us. Their presentations were interesting and something new for the audience which comprised of lawyers, CAs, MBA professionals and entrepreneurs. Who could have imagined that words like "sexy" and "unsexy' would be used in such conferences to describe an attractive investment. It was a healthy interaction of like minded people from varied backgrounds.And yes the tea time snacks after the conference were very much required for my small empty stomach.The tea itself didn't had a nice taste. It could have been better.

Looking forward for more of these conferences and hopefully as the member of the panel now having a smiling face. 

Sharp skills

In a country like India sharp skills are your surviving tool. By sharp skills I do not mean something that is taught in schools or colleges or something that one is born with. These skills are developed over a period of time. In a situation where you have just nobody to trust these skills are your guiding light. And we find ourselves in these kind of situations almost everyday.

These skills are quite common among the guys. The girls being usually brought up in quite a protective environment are somewhat lacking in these skills. But I would be contradicting myself by saying that these skills are in abundance among the housewives. The way they deal with the vendors while buying groceries and vegetables , their multi-tasking, their dominance while arranging a function at their place is somewhat quite admirable.

Among the guys its more of a practicality that can be seen. They just can't trust anybody so easily. A friend of mine arguing with the parking attendant on charging parking fees without a permit caught my attention. If you are not alert at any moment you can land up in serious trouble at times. These practical skills of cross-checking, dominance, strong voice, alertness, people management are your safeguards. Even if one is lacking in these skills, an effort made in acquiring these skills would not go waste. Its not really hard to acquire them as these can be learned from your day to day events and observations. The application of these skills at the right time with the right people in a right manner is where your presence of mind comes into play.

As the famous saying goes "Precaution is better than cure", so better protect yourself before hand than to land up in a trouble-some situation.  

Far away....yet close

It is never the distance that really matters but the thoughts and feelings I shared with him that really made me connect so well with him. You would always need someone with whom you could just share your deepest fears and feelings.It was really a comfort to me when the person with whom I was sharing my experience few days back had himself went through the same circumstances and faced similar situations.

I hardly had an interaction with him during my professional training classes during which we actually met each other.Then he went overseas for employment. Even after that we didn't really had much in common to talk about but yes the usual gal boy thing like movies, flirting, gossips and at times certain profession related topics.

But then it was a certain situation that I was going through which I started sharing with him just to lighten myself. It will be hard for me to describe that situation in words and its really not the situation that is important its the solution he provided me. Having gone through somewhat similar events he had an idea about what I was going through and he said its just "the beginning" and its just the initial steps that are hard to take, the rest of the journey isn't that tough. Its the simplest advice but it comforted me to quite an extent. At that instant he even made a call to me and my hour long conversation with him on the phone not only made me feel lighter but happier.

This far away yet close connection really works.Hope this blog would bring a smile on his face. An amazing quote that perfectly fits here, " Your journey will seem a bit incomplete if you don't end up making new buddies on the way."
Thank you buddy.

Tech Tonic

Technology....I never really thought I would be writing about this topic. I am not quite tech savvy kind of a girl. I would require all the help in the universe even to operate the simplest of the tech devices. I somewhat feel that me and technology don't have the same frequency. Even for making a simple online payment I really have to struggle a lot. My payment is never processed in one go.

While my friends would love to play "Angry Birds" on their touch screen phones I would rather prefer to use my non touch screen phone just for texting and chatting with a good old friend. Playing games online would never be on my list even when I have nothing to do and I am really bored. When I bought my first camera phone I didn't even knew what do we mean by megapixels.

But then there was this article in the newspaper that I came across the day before which made me write on this topic. The article was "how the net gave Delhi boy his memory back". This headline actually caught my attention. The article stated about a boy Mayank diagnosed with tubercular meningitis which is an infection of the central nervous system. This boy had lost his memory to such an extent that he didn't even understood the language. It was then that technology did the work of the medicine. He saw the desktop one day and recalled the day when his family first got it. It was a strange turn of the events that he who used to be a writer earlier had language as his biggest hurdle after the memory loss. He made mobile phone his English tutor. Watching the news on TV taught him how to construct the sentences. He then tested his re-acquired skills on Twitter whose character limit forces one to be creative. With an internet connection at hand but no memory, Mayank just googled himself. He discovered the articles he had written. And then Gmail helped him recollect the missing years of his life. Every e-mail told him something about himself in his own words. And not forgetting the most popular networking site Facebook helped him connecting with people he had earlier connected with.

At times we are so helpless that its just too hard to get back to leading our lives normally but then God sends us help in such forms that it leaves us astonished at our capabilities. But its possible only when we are ready to help ourselves and we never give up hope. Technology added one more merits to its already long list that it can be used to discover your own self. And moreover this article had  made me tech-lover now.

The Event

I couldn't have missed to write about this. It was something that had been missing from life for so long....something that I had probably been waiting for quite some time. Something like a medicine that I seriously required for my inner happiness. It was the STAGE...the Anchoring...Something that I love to do.

It was the first salary event that our company organizes to present to the new employees in the company their first salary cheques. This event is something which anybody would rarely get to see. Its a ceremony where your first salary cheque along with a memento is presented to your family which gives them a proud feeling. It was a nice get together of the employees along with their families and their new family being their colleagues and their seniors in the company.

As far as anchoring is concerned, this was the second time that i did it. Last i did comparing was in a inter house competition in school and I won it. I got to experience this yet again yesterday that when I am on stage and I have the mike, its a different me altogether. Something different from what I am normally in the routine. I kept thinking about being on stage before the event. Various thoughts running through my mind about how I'll be introducing the management and my colleagues plus adding a tinge of humour to it so that the audience is not bored and enjoys it thoroughly and yet keeping it quite decent. When the moment actually arrived it automatically brought a big smile on my face. I was completely enjoying it...at times forgetting my lines and then covering it up quite decently.

I can't afford to forget mentioning the presence of my co-host there who not only made me comfortable but was a boost to my confidence level. He himself being quite creative helped me out with most of the introductory lines.

After we concluded the event successfully, the appreciations which me and my co-host got to receive were amazing. The smile on the faces of my family members is unforgettable.

It was a tiring day though but the after thoughts running through my mind after the event didn't let me sleep at night. And even when I got some sleep what would you expect I had in my dreams. Yes..me anchoring the event.

I just hope I get more opportunities to do what I am good at. It is just like discovering your true self. Doing what you want to do and being astonishingly best at it. I hope to reach upto that stage quite soon in my life.

Passion and obsession

"She's hot, she's cool, she's just irresistible, she's amazingly attractive, she's beautiful." This is not about a super hot shot Hollywood diva but yes this is what a guy passionate about cars would describe his dream car like. This guy actually dreams about cars. Just like one fears losing his near and dear ones, this guy actually views a dream about his car getting drowned in a swamp and he is trying hard to save her and feeling terrible when he is not able to rescue her.

Its something crazy. And this craziness is what is called passion. Its a driving force. Something that actually makes you live life. One can retire from work but one can never retire from his passion. Perfection can be well achieved by passion. It's passion that made Sachin Tendulkar a 100 on 100 perfect.

There's a thin line of difference between passion and obsession. Going by the dictionary meaning passion is an intense feeling, emotion or desire for something while obsession is domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire etc. It can be understood this way passion in its negative form is obsession and obsession in its positive form is passion.

Passion can have innumerable forms ranging from cars, bikes, dance to cricket, music, and what not. These flames of passion should always be kept burning as this fire cannot harm when given the right direction.

The Beginning

On this 66th Indian Independence Day I am starting this blog of my mine and thus chose the title "The Beginning". Its a new beginning for me in most of the aspects of life right now. My entering the corporate world is a new "beginning". Starting this blog and waking up the inner hidden author in me having this flair to write is a new "beginning".

Many thoughts running through my mind....the character "Julie" from the Oscar winning movie "Julie and Julia"....I am just feeling similar to her. She needed something to do and keep her going after she reaches home every evening from work. So she started blogging about cooking which was her inner deep passion. I need the same. But I wont be blogging about cooking.

Hope this new "beginning" gives the right direction to my desires and my passion. And I hope this blog will the most happening one to read.